In a wireless system, mobile terminals transmit and receive data over bidirectional wireless links from one or more base stations. The mobile terminal-transmit direction is known as the uplink and the mobile terminal-receive direction is known as the downlink. The set of base stations with which a mobile terminal is communicating is known as the active set of base stations for that mobile terminal, or that mobile terminal's active set. During normal conditions when a mobile terminal is within a base station's coverage area, the active set for that mobile terminal would generally be a single base station so that the active set includes only that one base station, which is that mobile terminal's serving station. When a mobile terminal, however, is within the range of multiple base stations and as such is in a handoff state, the active set includes the multiple base stations, which are each monitoring the signal from that mobile terminal and decoding it when able to do so. Only one of the base stations, however, is the serving base station for that mobile terminal and the other base stations are non-serving base stations. FIG. 1 shows three base stations 101, 102 and 103 and their respective cell coverage areas 104, 105 and 106. Mobile terminal 107 is shown within the coverage area 104 of base station 101, which is its serving base station. Non-serving base stations 102 and 103, however, in addition to serving base station 101 constitute the active set for mobile terminal 107.
In a data system, on the downlink, the mobile terminal 107 receives data from only one base station but has the option of reselecting the serving base station in order to receive data from any other base station in its active set depending on from which base station the mobile terminal receives a signal with the highest signal-to-noise ratio. On the uplink, the serving and the non-serving base stations each attempts to demodulate and decode transmissions from the mobile terminal.
The capacity of a wireless system refers either to the number of mobile terminals that can simultaneously transmit or receive data, or the aggregate date rate of these mobile terminals, either expressed in mobile terminals/sector, erlangs/sector or data throughput/sector. The uplink capacity of the system can be different from its downlink capacity. For symmetric services, such as voice, (i.e., required throughput/data rate for a mobile terminal on the uplink is equal to that on the downlink), the overall system capacity is limited by the lower of uplink and downlink capacity. In current wireless systems specified by standards such as CDMA2000 1x, EV-DO Rev 0 and Rev A, HSDPA/EDCH, and WiMAX, the uplink has a substantially lower capacity than the downlink. This imbalance needs to be remedied for full use of downlink capacity and to maximize the number of mobile terminals than can operate symmetric services on the system.
In wireless systems that are based on direct spread or multi-carrier (optionally with preceding) CDMA, a plurality of mobile terminals within a sector (and across sectors) re-use a spreading sequence or a set of frequency tones to communicate with their respective active sets, while being differentiated by mobile terminal-specific codes. A mechanism for increasing uplink sector capacity is to perform successive interference cancellation on these transmissions at the base station transceiver. FIG. 2 illustrates base station noise rise components. As shown, at a base station receiver 200, the total rise over thermal noise in a sector consists of the composite signal 201 from the mobile terminals within that sector for which that base station is the serving base station, and the out-of-cell interference 202 caused by mobile terminals transmitting in adjacent sectors. The latter includes interference from those mobile terminals in the adjacent sectors for which base station receiver 200 is within these mobile terminals' active set but for which base station 200 is non-serving, plus the interference caused by other transmitting mobile terminals in other sectors that do not include base station 200 within each such mobile terminal's active set.
An illustrative method of interference cancellation is disclosed in co-pending patent application Ser. No. 10/401,594 filed Mar. 31, 2003, and published as U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US2004/0192208 A1 on Sep. 30, 2004. Using such an interference cancellation method, if the decoding of any mobile terminal is successful, its signal is reconstructed and subtracted from the composite received signal at the base station. FIG. 3 shows a successive interference cancellation scheme at an exemplary base station receiver 300 that is the serving base station for four mobile terminals 301, 302, 303 and 304 within a sector of that base station receiver 300. The received power at base station receiver 300 from mobile terminals 301, 302, 303, and 304 is respectively P_1, P_2, P_3, and P_4. In addition, base station receiver 300 receives a composite signal power as the result of out-of-cell interference (IOC) caused by transmissions from mobile terminals out of the sector. When a particular transmission from a mobile terminal from within the sector is successfully decoded by the base station receiver, the transmission is reconstructed and subtracted from the composite signal at the base station, after which another received signal is demodulated, decoded, reconstructed and subtracted from the remaining composite signal. This process is repeated for each of the remaining signals. Advantageously, the signals from the mobile terminals that are decoded later in the demodulation and decoding process do not “see” the interference from transmissions from the mobile terminals that were decoded earlier in the sequence. FIG. 3 shows a successive calculation of the signal-to-noise ratios (Snr_1-Snr_4) of the four mobile terminals 301-304, respectively. Starting with mobile terminal 301, Snr_1 is calculated as    P11/(P_2+P_3+P_4+IOC+N), where N is the measurable thermal noise. The contribution from each is successively subtracted off from the received composite signal at the base station receiver, so that, for the last mobile terminal 304, Snr_4 is calculated as P_4/(IOC+N). Since the mobile terminals that are decoded later see a higher signal-to-noise ratio, they are capable of supporting either a higher rate of transmission and/or increased reliability.
In the above-described scenario, it is not possible for the base station receiver to successfully decode the transmissions of all the mobile terminals that have this base station sector in their active set. As a result, most of the out-of-cell interference received by a base station receiver cannot be deducted. Thus, as noted above, the signal-to-noise ratio for station 304 is still limited by this out-of-cell interference IOC.
Typically, the power control rule followed by mobile terminals is to either (i) follow power control commands from the serving sector in its active set, or (ii) follow a rule known as the or-of-the downs, whereby the mobile terminal lowers its power if any of the base stations in the active set instructs it to do so via a down power control command. While an or-of-the-downs power control ensures successful reception of the mobile terminal's transmission at at least one base station (presumably the one with the best uplink connection from the mobile terminal), it also ensures that the mobile terminal's transmission is not received with adequate signal-to-noise ratio to be successfully decodable at all of the base stations in the active set. Thus, this undecodable interference limits the capacity gain from a system employing successive interference cancellation. Even as mobile terminals within a sector transmit with ever increasing powers, in order to increase their signal-to-noise ratios at the base station receiver (and hence achieve higher data rates), their interference to adjacent sectors grows proportionately, thereby limiting the rates that can be achieved by mobile terminals in those sectors. In turn, the interference from the mobile terminals in adjacent sectors marginalizes the gains for the mobile terminals with the sector under consideration that increased their power in the first place.
A methodology is thus desired that enables a base station receiver to reconstruct and subtract the out-of-cell interference from the composite received signal so that the signal-to-noise ratio can be improved for all in-sector mobile terminals.